iOS 5 and iCloud: Apple Ushers in Post-PC Utopia

When Steve Jobs first introduced the concept of a post-PC world at the D8 conference last year, the world looked on with an interested, slightly-bemused, and hushed silence. The original iPad had been a huge hit, and smartphone sales were exploding, but to herald the death of the PC — the death of OS X, Windows, and desktop Linux — was one step too far. But here we are: it’s 2011, one billion 3G users are connected, iPads and iPhones are flying off the shelves, and the PC market is shrinking. The apocalypse itself might not have started, but the drumming crescendo has begun. The post-PC world, whether you like it or not, will soon be upon us.

In this post-PC world, the desktop and laptop become devices. They are no longer a family hub, and they are no longer the final destination for all of your photos, videos, and music. In a post-PC world, the bloated OS with the monstrous file system is no longer the master of your computational needs. In this post-PC world, you simply whip out your device and interact with the cloud. The cloud doesn’t care whether you’re using a smartphone or tablet, or Windows or Mac desktop, it just serves up your files — what you do from there is up to you.

Today Apple announced that iOS 5 will update over the air and never require syncing with a Mac or Windows PC running iTunes. Today Apple ushered in iCloud, a free service that mirrors your music, photos, videos, documents, contacts, and calendars across your iDevices in real time. Today Apple showed us its beautiful, billion-dollar data center which will power all of its post-PC services. Today Apple told the world that it’s ready to begin its roll out of the post-PC world, that it’s going to be spectacular, and that you will be coming along for the ride.

Don’t be scared, though: Apple will hold your hand every step of the way. While the rest of the industry has cut corners and outed deplorable devices in an attempt to keep up, Apple has been working on making the transition to a post-PC world as smooth and as effortless as possible. By virtue of being the the industry front-runner and the one to coin the phrase, Jobs has kept well ahead of the pack. Other hardware and software companies have caught a whiff of the shifting tides, and a select few are starting to toe the line, but realistically Apple is going to go into this post-PC world with a big head start.

Beyond desktop PCs, which will soon only have specialized uses, a big question mark now hangs over the future of netbooks and ultrabooks. Will there always be a market for portable devices with physical keyboards, or will the popularity of tablets continue to grow until they are the dominant platform? Intel and ARM (Nvidia) both have exciting chips in the pipeline that will make netbooks more viable — but netbooks don’t run iOS, and the jury is still out on Windows 8.

Really, that’s what it now comes down to: Microsoft, and Windows 8 — the first version of Windows that doesn’t actually use windows; it uses tiles. Windows 8, by the looks of it, will sport deep cloud integration and a feature set that’s close to iOS 5. By the looks of it, iCloud will only be accessible with native apps, too, leaving web apps high and dry. Windows 8 will support a wider set of form factors, too, which could allow for an even smoother post-PC experience. Microsoft has to nail it, though; Microsoft, with significantly less experience than Apple, has to get it right first time. Otherwise, like Tolkien’s elves fading into the mists of historic epoch, Microsoft might have to make way for Apple’s post-PC world.

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If we are to have safety of our data and full certainty that we will always be able to use our computers and access our data, it is an absolute prerequisite that the operating system and all applications are user-controlled. That means, the software needs to reside locally on the computer where it is used, it must be capable of being copied without restrictions, and the software must be capable of being installed and run indefinitely on compatible hardware with no ties at all to its manufacturer. – Per Inge Oestmoen, Norway

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